


myths about dandelions

by vous



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M, coming of age tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 15:54:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1904925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vous/pseuds/vous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>evgeni malkin joins the team in 2006 after a year-long process of international transfer disputes and angry russian officials. the circle pauses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	myths about dandelions

**Author's Note:**

> j sent me a text two nights ago at 2am with a list of links to pictures of sidney crosby looking uncomfortable and no context. she inspires me. this is for her.
> 
> please keep in mind that between each section in this is a jump in time. and also keep in mind that this is a work of fiction. please.

 

i.

things fall into place.

part of the reason why sid thinks he got so successful is because he’s a perfectionist; he likes things when they’re complete, he likes things when they’re symmetrical.

things fall into place when he spends hour after hour at the local rink, shooting at a make-believe goalie until it closes at 6 on mondays through thursdays.

“you’re phenomenal,” the zamboni guy tells him one night after he gets off the ice. “really, i think you’re gonna go somewhere big.”

and he’s right.

sid ends up being the first overall pick in the 2005 entry draft, and he watches this moment on tv, him putting on the pens jersey for the first time in his life and shaking hands with mario lemieux. he focuses on the way his smile falters when a camera flashes—and look how young he was, bright eyes and bad hair.

 

he goes back to signing that first contract, his name under 8.7 million a year, and he smiles at that—good 87, lucky 87. good fortune comes in bunches, and his share was that number.

sid was born on the 7th of august, 1987, and it’s not that he thinks the stars were aligned that day to grant him hockey powers, but he does think that the date’s had some kind of impact on his life, maybe psychologically the way a placebo pill would affect its patient.

“kids with birthdays like that always turn out extraordinary,” his dad had always said, and he would say it enough times until his son would believe it too.

 

he wouldn’t call himself superstitious or old-fashioned, but rather routinely. take the long hallway before home games, flatten the corners of the knobs when taping sticks, have a peanut butter and jelly at 5. it’s simple, really, and the pattern continues everyday in a habitual, complete circle.

  

evgeni malkin joins the team in 2006 after a year-long process of international transfer disputes and angry russian officials. the circle pauses.

it’s the few minutes right before a game, evgeni’s first nhl game, and the boys are all running out in their gear, one by one onto the ice. sid breathes in. and then.

“oh,” he says. “are you usually last?”

“yeah,” evgeni replies.

“oh.”

it’s part of the routine.

“well, me three years super league,” evgeni eventually says and grins.

sid slides out onto the ice right foot first, and a second after, he hears evgeni follow behind.

 

“i’d say malkin might be the best in the league, and finally he’s here in pittsburgh,” the radio says that night, and sid the first overall draft pick doesn’t know what to think.

he decides, three months later, while watching half the team do skating drills around the ice one morning, that geno isn’t all that bad, actually, not bad at all. his english is awful, but the way he plays wholly makes up for it. 

and he makes him laugh. geno’s not bad at all.

 

 

 

 

ii. 

people always assume that, out of all the penguins’ members, sidney crosby is the most likely to be gay.

he’s never really thought too much about it because he’s had relationships with girls before and hockey took up most of his life anyway, but it’s still quite a surprise when he finds out it’s actually james neal who prefers boys. 

he hears it from duper by accident while they’re sharing a room in montreal, and it’s obvious that duper didn’t mean to out him at all, but for some reason sid keeps pressing.

“i don’t know, he just told me,” pascal says, looking away. “he just said he thinks he’s gay, and i asked why, and he said he didn’t know. that’s it.”

he leaves it alone at that, though it bothers him for the next few days. he doesn’t think he’s ever had any gay friends, so for someone so close to suddenly be that person is strange, and when he sees paul talking to james without a shirt on in the locker room, he wonders what it feels like, what’s going on in his head, what he’s thinking.

paul laughs and touches his arm, their bodies close, and sid notices the way james leans in, the look on his face. and he wonders if he’s ever felt that too.

 

sid gets an invitation to his cousin’s wedding later that week, sent in a beige envelope with gold cursive letters that never loop only once. he can’t make it because it’s going to be playoff season soon, but the invite was still nice to receive. 

 _save the date,_ it reads at the bottom of the paper. on the back he finds a small four-leaf clover taped inside a box with the words handwritten:

 

 

 

> _for you—_
> 
> _i know there’s a small chance of you being able to attend since you’re so busy all the time. good luck at the playoffs though, and bring home the cup! and remember to pay attention to yourself above everything._
> 
> _the irish say that clovers with four leaves bring love to those who see it, so look up, and find someone to love._
> 
> _em_

 

he smiles at this and thinks about emily, grown up and getting married now, and touches the clover with his index finger.

pay attention to yourself, she had said. 

“sid,” a voice calls out.

and find someone to love.

he looks up.

“yeah?”

he sees geno.

 

 

 

 

iii.

sid wonders how people would react if he ever made a coming-out statement, it would probably be either of disgust or support, nothing in between, you can play would contact him immediately, and his reputation would go from the best hockey player to the gay hockey player.

he comes out to james on a friday night only because he know he’s gay too, and it’s easier to talk to someone with the same secret.

it doesn’t go so well however, and james realizes early that pascal had leaked his personal information out to sid (why else would he be here), so it ends up being more like an interrogation than anything.

he decides coming out to the general public is a bad idea and doesn’t talk about it to anyone else.

 

suttsy accidentally messes with sid’s sticks after they’re taped the next day, and sid gets upset, feeling like now something will go terribly wrong during a play. he knows he’s acting immature and not like the captain he should be, but these sort of things get to him, and he spends the rest of the pre-game time sulking.

but geno slides past him during warmups with a tap on his back and a small smile, and sid actually feels a little better.

 

 

 

 

iv.

james neal gets traded in late june.

“good luck in nashville,” sid says to him over the phone the next day, and james thanks him quickly, hanging up a few moments later.

sid thinks back to montreal, two men sitting in a hotel room and duper unintentionally slipping out a team member’s sexuality for the first time.

he stares at james neal’s contact information laid out on his phone screen.

 

the problem with james had actually started a while ago, only a couple weeks after pascal’s revelation, first with zach sill and an offhand comment, and then suddenly everyone in the room knew james was gay, and all sid remembers about it now is making eye contact with paul martin as he stood quietly off to the side, not saying anything.

he remembers what followed that incident more clearly, him in the elevator with flower and then flower stepping out at the third floor and geno stepping in. 

“sid,” geno had said, “you okay?”

“yeah, i’m fine,” he told him. the elevator had smelled like the deodorant geno used to wear before he lost it in columbus.

they stood there in silence as the lift pulled them two floors up to where their rooms were.

when the doors opened neither of them moved for a moment. and then sid had begun to move, his fingers wrapped around the strap of his duffel bag. 

“nealsy told me you like boys,” said geno and everything on sid’s mind had stopped before being replaced with immediate anxiety. 

“he’s only tell me,” geno quickly added and sid still didn’t know what to say. he looked at the walls. he panicked silently.

“sid,” geno said again, and his voice had been softer that time, and it was so quiet sid could almost hear a faint buzz in his ears. “you know… i don’t care.”

and then for some reason geno had reached out and touched his arm gently, so that the feeling stayed long after he moved away.

 

sid tells himself later not to read too much into it, try not to overthink it, and he falls asleep texting flower, his mind drifting back to geno.

 

 

 

 

v.

they’re in the airport parking lot.

it’s spring, the sound of traffic is louder than the crickets, and there’s a kind of humid electricity in the air, the way it feels after it rains.

geno’s here. they stand in front of his car.

“maybe i go back to russia for summer,” he’s saying. “take vacation.”

sid looks at him and the scar on his chin and wants to invite him to canada.

“keep in touch, geno,” he tells him, and he’s said this to everybody but he really means it for geno, especially him.

he doesn’t know exactly how this started, but he watches geno get into his car and he feels warm inside, warm and light and celestial.

“see you in training,” he calls out and geno waves back.

 

during the drive home, sid thinks back to a moment, a long time ago, and he's not sure why he's just now remembering it, but it was back when james neal and paul martin were still on the team, before zach sill and everything else...

they were standing in the locker room, and paul had been laughing at something—or maybe he hadn't been, sid can't remember—but there was this look on james' face in that moment, an expression indefinable except intimate, and sid thinks about that again; he thinks about geno and he now understands how james felt right then, and he can't—there's nothing, there's no way of describing it.

 

it's going to be a long summer.

 

 

 

 

vi.

sid spends some time during the offseason near montreal with his family where his dad had rented a lake house for them to stay in for a few days.

it’s nice like this—getting older, sid’s seen less and less of his family, so he enjoys the opportunity, having barbecues outside like when he was a child too many years ago. he spends most of his time with taylor, walking around outside and talking about everything. 

at one point, they come across a small patch of seeding dandelions, and of course taylor bends down and picks two. she hands one to sid. 

“it’s been a while since we've done this,” she says.

sid doesn’t really know what to wish for, there are too many things in mind, so when he blows he’s not thinking of anything specific. he manages to blow all the white seeds off the dandelion at once and when he turns to taylor, she’s smiling. 

“why are you smiling?” he asks.

she points at the empty stem.

“have you ever heard that myth about dandelions? not the wishing one,” she says.

“what is it?”

“it means you’re in love,” she tells him, “when you blow all the seeds off in one try.”

he looks at the stem pressed against his palm and he laughs. he thinks of geno.

“it’s just a myth,” taylor says and tosses her half-full dandelion to the grass.

“i know,” he replies and lets his fall between his feet. they move on.

 

eighty-seven days until regular season, he thinks.

 


End file.
